Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Oral Histories Bronx African American History Project 11-11-2005 Himmelstein, Paul Himmelstein, Paul. Bronx African American History Project Fordham University Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/baahp_oralhist Part of the African American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Himmelstein, Paul. November 11, 2005. Interview with the Bronx African American History Project. BAAHP Digital Archive at Fordham University. This Interview is brought to you for free and open access by the Bronx African American History Project at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oral Histories by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Interviewee: Paul Himmelstein Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison and Dr. Brian Purnell Date: November 11, 2005 Mark Naison (MN): Paul Himmelstein a great Doo-Wop singer from the Morrisania neighborhood and it’s November 11th and we are at Fordham University. MN: Paul Tell us a little about your family and how - - were you born in the Bronx? Paul Himmelstein (PH): Yes. I was born at Prospect and Jennings Street I'm one of fourteen children, I'm number eleven as I previously said and it was a family orientated neighborhood. I mean, there were a few big families and we were one of them. Like I said, we were fourteen but the Chandlers, there was a family called the Chandlers, they had seventeen and the Browns had ten. The Elis - - they had nine so I'm just giving names of the top of my head, which of course Eli - one of them sang with me the base, he was he bass and then Bobby Higgs he had ten in his family. MN: Now when your family first moved to Jennings and Prospect PH: I was born. [Crosstalk] MN: They moved there before you were born. PH: I think I must have - -I accidentally - -I really thought I was born on Prospect and Jennings Street and one time I had to get a birth certificate for a reason I forget for school or something, and I noticed that I was born on Bathgate Avenue; but obviously they moved then because I was number eleven like I said and they probably needed a bigger place. So I only know about the Prospect and Jennings Street. MN: And your father was a cab driver? PH: Well he used to drive a truck and delivering live poultry during the week and he drove a cab on the weekend, he worked seven days a week. MN: Was your, were both of your parents Jewish? PH: Yes. 1 Interviewee: Paul Himmelstein Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison and Dr. Brian Purnell Date: November 11, 2005 MN: Were their parents immigrants? How long have you - PH: Well my grandmother, on my mother's side, I believe yes. I believe, they weren't born here because as a matter of fact my mother was born on the way here, I think in Austria. MN: Right. Now did your parents speak Yiddish? Or? PH: Yes. My mother could, my father could, if I remember when they had little arguments over stupid thing around the house type of stuff, you pick up - - it is funny they always say you learn the bad words in most people's language, so- called bad words, so I learned a few Jewish words that way; but I - - all in all they got along we didn't have a like an abusive type of father or family thing going on in there. MN: How many rooms was the apartment that - PH: Six rooms. It was like the dining room was also the living room, it was that type of apartment and you had a long foyer that led from the entrance of the door, if you keep walking down this long foyer you walk into the dining room which is also again the living room we had a gigantic, a gigantic table there handed down from my father’s side of the family. I'm sure today it's worth thousands. We did not know the value even then it was probably worth something. But that's where we watched TV, that's where we listened to the radio, before TV and things like that. MN: Now what are your earliest memories of sort of the neighborhood when you were three four years old? PH: Well I remember you could sit, - - you can hang out - - your mother could sit I mean late summer nights, you could sit on the stoop while you played in front of the building with your friends. I remember my sister buying me a rocking horse. I never forgot that. There was a shoe maker they also had little toys in there on the corner of the building and 2 Interviewee: Paul Himmelstein Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison and Dr. Brian Purnell Date: November 11, 2005 she went in there and bought me this rocking horse -- and I hope four and not twenty four then, make a fool out of myself but I must have been about four or something like that. Anyway, but it was a kind of neighborhood where you played games street games always street games, with the chalk on the ground stoopball. MN: Stoop ball. PH: Yes stoop ball. Hand ball. Yes the whole thing. Sometime you had a one neighborhood playing against another neighborhood - -I never really got into that because I guess I wasn't sporty enough I never got pick with things like that. Once or twice I did because they were short handed, so they had no choice but to take me. They needed another guy for second base or something but there was a lot of that going on ringalevio these are old games. You made scooters from a from a skate. These were some of the toys we had, you could make things back then, you take one skate large or small thing with the key, the skate key. Yes, you took a board like so, and you put the skate, you tie, you bang the skate with a nail and stuff and you built it with a milk crate on top and everybody designed theirs. These were the kind of toys we had. Even in Halloween, there’d be a gang of people when you went around trick or treating we would go to the Wilkins Avenue Market and the trick or treat days. MN: Now where was Wilkins Avenue? Is that down this hill? PH: Yes. Down that steep hill, there was a steep hill. I'd say is about four to five blocks from where I grew up. MN: It's a little closer to Southern Blvd? PH: Yes. The train station there is Freeman Street train station and Southern Blvd was further down. 3 Interviewee: Paul Himmelstein Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison and Dr. Brian Purnell Date: November 11, 2005 MN: What was the Wilkins Market like when you? PH: It was a Jewish market, the whole area. the Wilkins Avenue area - Wilkins and Jennings Street. It was a big shopping area just like - - Bathgate Avenue was, but we lived near that market and the five and ten was there all along Wilkins Avenues were stores, there were Jewish delis, restaurants, - - my mother shopped there and we came from school and - - where's mom the door was always open in an unlocked way you can just walk in, nobody locked their doors. MN: Nobody locked their doors. PH: That's right. And many times I went home nobody was in the house and I’d be calling for my mother , but she might have been down I - - from common knowledge, she was down in the neighbor's there visiting, they might be watching some soap operas, or something like that back in the day. This is - - I'm talking about now when TV showed up. We were one of the first people in our area on the block to get a TV. My father, he hit the number I think he won about five hundred dollars; [laughter] yes five hundred dollars, and next thing we know one day, they delivered this three way combination the screen was about this big back then and it was a record player and a radio. You opened up the door it was that type thing and - - that was like back then I'll tell you the truth that was like going to the movies in your house [laughter] because instead of waiting for Saturday, and the shows that they had on the radio I remember them but sitting around the radio in my house and you made it your business to get up stairs - - Oh the Fat Man is coming on, or The Shadow, things like that and you sat there with potato chips and things like that, around the radio listening to these dramas and stuff. MN: was this like just after World War II? Or-- 4 Interviewee: Paul Himmelstein Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison and Dr. Brian Purnell Date: November 11, 2005 PH: Well I will say part - - during World War II. MN: Now do you remember air raid drills? PH: Yes - - my father - - yes I do I remember the sirens going off and I remember everybody had to shut their light - - my father went downstairs - - he was an air raid warden that I only knew that because one time I looked out the window and he be talking shut your lights, shut your lights, shut your lights, and it was my father standing in the middle of the gutter pointing at people shut you lights, shut your lights and all that stuff and he was like an air warden volunteer type of thing because he went to the service but they - he went in the service when he was too young and his mother protested it and they had to let him out because he was too young to be in the service.